Vacuum cleaners can be generally classified into a canister type and an upright type. The canister type vacuum cleaner includes a main body and a suction nozzle connected to the main body by a connection pipe. The upright type vacuum cleaner includes a main body and a suction nozzle integrally formed with the main body.
A conventional cyclone type vacuum cleaner includes a suction nozzle for sucking air containing dust, a main body unit communicating with the suction nozzle, a cyclone dust separation unit for separating dust contained in the air, and a dust collection unit for storing the separated dust. The vacuum cleaner may also include an extension pipe for guiding the air sucked through the suction nozzle toward the main body unit, and a connection hose having a first end connected to the extension pipe and a second end connected to the main body unit.
In some conventional cyclone vacuum cleaners, the cyclone dust separation unit is incorporated into the dust collection unit. Also, some conventional cyclone vacuum cleaners make use of a main cyclone unit for separating relatively large-sized dust particles contained in the air, and one or more secondary cyclone units disposed downstream of the main cyclone unit to separate relatively small-sized dust particles from the air. Typically, the dust collection unit includes both of the main cyclone unit and the secondary cyclone units.
A conventional cyclone vacuum cleaner with a dust collection unit that also houses the main and secondary cyclone units has several problems.
First, because the dust collection unit must house the main and secondary cyclone units, if the dust collection unit is designed to store a large amount of collected dust, the dust collection unit becomes very large. This makes it difficult to handle.
Alternatively, if the dust collection unit is designed to be small, so that it is easy to handle, the fact that the dust collection unit also includes the cyclone units means that there is very little space left over for storing collected dust. This means the dust collection unit must be emptied more frequently.